"One of the homes belongs to Khaled el-Kweldi, a top aide to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Ibrahim said. He was not home at the time of the attack, but Khaleda el-Kweldi, a 6-year-old girl, was killed, along with Khalid el-Kweldi, a 4-year-old boy, the spokesman said. Another 6-year-old, Salam Lanouri, was also killed, according to Ibrahim."

Granny says now Obama can bomb the schlitz outta Qaddafi...Senate Committee Passes Resolution Authorizing US Intervention in LibyaJune 28, 2011 - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a resolution authorizing limited U.S. participation in the NATO-led military campaign over Libya for one year. The House of Representatives voted down the measure last week. Tuesdays committee vote followed a lively debate over presidential authority in ordering U.S. military intervention.

By a vote of 14 to 5, the Foreign Relations Committee approved the resolution after adopting language specifying that the United States will bear no reconstruction costs and deploy no ground forces in a post-Gadhafi Libya. Hours earlier, lawmakers grappled with a basic question: What does it mean to be at war? The issue has been hotly debated since President Barack Obama ordered U.S. military intervention in Libya. The administration argues that the Libya mission is limited in scope, does not involve active military hostilities or U.S. ground forces, and therefore requires no approval by Congress.

At issue is the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which gives U.S. administrations 60 days to secure congressional authorization to engage in hostilities abroad, and an additional 30 days to withdraw forces if no authorization is granted. The Libya mission crossed the 90-day threshold earlier this month. The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat John Kerry, says there is no comparison between the U.S. engagement in Libya and the Vietnam War of the 1960s and '70s - a protracted, undeclared war that spawned the War Powers Resolution. Our involvement in Libya is obviously, clearly different from our fight in Vietnam. It is a very limited operation. In Libya today, no American is being shot at, no American troops are on the ground, and we are not going to put them there," he said.

That view was echoed by the State Departments top legal advisor, Harold Koh, who testified before the committee. We are far from the core case that most members of Congress had in mind when they passed the [War Powers R]esolution in 1973. They were concerned then about no more Vietnams. But we do not believe that the 1973 Congress intended that its resolution should be construed so rigidly to stop the president from directing supporting action in a NATO-led, [U.N.] Security Council-authorized operation [in Libya] with international approval," he said.

Koh was challenged by the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Richard Lugar. The fact that we are leaving most of the shooting [over Libya] to other countries does not mean that the United States is not involved in acts of war," he said. Lugar argued that if another country were taking part in a bombing campaign over the United States, the American public would consider it an act of war. He accused President Obama of casting aside his legal and constitutional duties as commander-in-chief. President Obama made a deliberate decision not to seek a congressional authorization of his action -- either before it commenced or during the last three months. The president does not have the authority to substitute his judgment for constitutional process when there is no emergency that threatens the United States and our vital interests," he said.

You have NATO bombing and killing Lybian civilians with reckless abandon while American Troops are brought up on charges for murder if a civilian is killed in Afghanistan in a crossfire. At least give the American Troops the benefit of the doubt if you sanction NATO killing of civilians.

China's trade relations raise eyebrows...China Expands Economic Influence Around the WorldJune 28, 2011 - With more than $3 trillion in foreign currency reserves, China has become the world's biggest lender, outpacing even the World Bank in loans to developing countries. As part of a VOA series on Chinas economic influence, Mil Arcega examines Beijings foreign reserves and the debate over the true value of its currency.

If the global economy were the board game Monopoly, China would have the largest share of cash. The United States, with one fourth of the world's gross domestic product, would own most of the properties. But because the United States borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends, much of what it earns goes toward paying the interest on its loans, much of it held by China. Domenico Lombardi is an international monetary expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"Clearly, China has become the most important creditor to the United States," Lombardi says."This enables China to exert significant pressure in bilateral talks and were seeing that in the context of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship." Former World Bank Director for China Yukon Huang is an Asia expert at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's now the second largest economy; it's the world's largest exporter. And people forecast in 10 years or 15 years, it will be the world's largest economy."

The cost of cheap currency

But China's monetary policies have come under fire. Critics say Beijing undervalues its currency to make its exports cheaper. Despite China's pledge to reform its exchange rate last year, the yuan has risen five percent against the dollar. The United States says Beijing's undervalued currency accounts for its large trade deficit with China and the loss of thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But the Carnegie Endowment's Yukon Huang says a stronger Chinese currency would eliminate the market for its low-cost goods, forcing China to adopt the Japanese model: competing against the United States in high-end markets and technology goods.

"So a higher exchange rate, in my view, actually creates more trade friction with the United States rather than less," says Huang. "It actually makes the American consumer probably worse off rather than better. But who would benefit from this higher exchange rate? Other emerging market countries." Instead of creating jobs in the United States, Huang says, American companies would find cheap labor elsewhere. "They're not generating jobs in the United States because these parts and components are being produced everywhere -- including China -- so Americans don't actually feel the benefits, the day-to-day benefits among its people. But these companies make a fortune, he says.

China Supports Global Pariahs, Gets Resources and Criticism in ReturnJune 28, 2011 - China's global search for resources and energy to fuel its booming economy has taken it places many Western countries are unwilling and unable to go.

China analysts say that by ignoring the behavior of some bad actors, and the pressure of Western sanctions, Beijing has put itself in a unique position to not only seize much needed access to oil, gas and farmland, but strategic advantages and opportunities on the global stage as well.

Out of Africa

China relies on Africa for more than one-third of its petroleum imports. And without those imports, analysts say, it would have some very serious problems maintaining its current levels of economic growth. "But its an oversimplification to think that China is only interested in natural resources. Its also interested in its position in the world," says Peter Pham, director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. "The diplomatic influence that Africa, and its 53 soon to be 54 states, brings to international forums, as well as creating a more multipolar world which advantages Chinas national interests more broadly."

Two countries China maintains ties with in Africa that have attracted the attention of the international community and activists are Sudan and Zimbabwe. Beijing has been a long time ally of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled almost single-handedly for the past three decades. His administration and ZANU-PF party has been accused of numerous human rights violations. Zimbabwe has not only given China access to its rich resources of more than 40 different minerals but to land as well to grow crops that can be shipped back to China. "Zimbabwe has everything from diamonds to tobacco and farm land," says Peter Navarro, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine. "China has gone in there and there are a lot of Chinese farmers there now tilling Zimbabwean soil growing crops that are sent back to China while the people of Zimbabwe starve."

China is Zimbabwe's biggest importer of tobacco and China International Water and Electric Company, Pham notes, has lease holds on over a quarter of a million acres of land in southern Zimbabwe for the raising of maize, which it exports back to China. In turn, China provides Mugabe and his party with political cover in the United Nations Security Council and at the U.N. Human Rights Council. And it's not just political cover. China is providing Mugabe's government with "everything from J-8 fighter bomber aircraft have been provided to the Mugabe regime to technical assistance," says Peter Pham. "Some analysts point the finger at China for providing assistance to tap phones and electronic communications of political dissidents."

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